Designer Sharmila Nair worked with the trans rights non-profit Queerala to seek out trans women to be the faces of her Mazhavi ("rainbow" in Malayalam) line of saris. Nair told me she hopes the campaign helps to humanize and raise the profile of trans women in India.

"It should really open up more opportunities for transgender [people]," she told me. "People should break the ice."

The women in the photos, Maya Menon and Gowri Savithri, had no professional modeling experience before working with Nair.

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"I have never had open conversations even with my own family about this. Not many of my friends are aware that I am a transgender. But this shoot has given me the confidence to admit that I am one,” Menon told The News Minute.

Both women are from the South Indian state of Kerala, which is far ahead of the rest of the country and the U.S. in promoting and protecting the rights of transgender people. In November last year, Kerala's state government enacted a transgender policy specifically designed to uphold transgender peoples' constitutional rights, including equal access to education and housing, and reiterating that trans people should feel as safe from violence as anyone else.

“We assure the transgenders in the state that your freedom and movement will be taken care of by the Kerala Government,” M. K. Muneer, the state's minister for social justice, said at the time.